Hallucinations
by Nemainofthewater
Summary: When Katniss is nearly shot in District 2, she is saved by someone she thought was dead. But nobody else has seen him, and she hides what she saw, desperate to kill President Snow. But who is the mysterious man in the lower levels? cinna/portia
1. Chapter 1

Title : Hallucinations

Author : Nemainofthewater

Disclaimer : I don't own anything you recognise. It all belongs to Suzanne Collins.

**Prologue**

_My words hang in the air. I look to the screens, hoping to see them recording some wave of reconciliation going through the crowd. Instead I see myself get shot on television._

**Mockingjay, end of chapter 15**

There's a noise, that seems as loud as explosion in my ears, and a force slams into me, knocking me sideways just as the bullet whistled over my head. My head was woozy from where it had been banged against the ground, and things began to blur. I looked up at as the world began to fade, and see a pair of green eyes that seemed achingly familiar.

"_Please, that bullet never even touched you. Cinna saw to that." She says._

**Johanna, Mockingjay, chapter 16**

The words seem to hang in the air as I remember the green eyes staring at me as I faded from consciousness.

"Cinna?" I ask, "Is he here?"

Johanna frowns at me, and then says, uncharacteristically gently,

"Katniss, Cinna is dead. You know that. The Peacekeepers killed him."

My head starts to ache again. Am I hallucinating? But then…

"Who saved me?" I ask, desperately hoping that Johanna had made a mistake and that at any moment my friend will come bursting in the room, asking how I am.

"One of the workers." Johanna says, and I sink back into my hospital bed. My concussion mustn't have completely been healed. I hope that Johanna doesn't tell this to any of the doctors. I want to get out of here as soon as possible. I want to kill Snow.

A man strides down a corridor. He's tall and ordinary and could be anyone. He bursts into a room and his green and gold eyes stare at the person opposite him.

"This is enough," he says quietly. "Tell her."


	2. Chapter 2

Title : Hallucinations

Author : Nemainofthewater

Disclaimer : I don't own anything you recognise. It all belongs to Suzanne Collins.

**Chapter 2**

My first day out of the hospital, and I want to start training immediately. I ignore my confused feelings about Peeta, and my dread at the thought that I'm hallucinating, _going insane, _and I throw myself into training with Johanna.

I don't hear anything more of the man who saved me, and I start to think that my vision was just a hallucination, brought on by the concussion I had, and the stress of Peeta and being the Mockingjay.

I walk into the dining hall with Johanna. Turnips tonight and I eat them hungrily before Johanna steals them. Then I look up, and I see a man with brown hair walking out of the door, and I'm so sure that it's him that I almost cry out before I remember.

Don't give them any reason to stop you killing him.

I get up, suddenly not hungry and hand my bowl to Johanna. I move towards the door, and casually, ever so casually!, walk out. I look down both sides of the corridor, but don't see anyone.

Around the corner, Cinna caught his breath. That was close. He couldn't let Katniss see him; she couldn't know he was alive. He didn't want to distract her on her mission to kill President Snow; he couldn't let the same thing that happened to Portia happen to anyone else.

He slipped down the corridor to a plain door, identical to the others, and keyed in a code to open it. It slid open, and the familiar face of Venia stared into his eyes, her golden tattoos standing as prominent as ever.

"Cinna? Come in quickly before anyone sees you."

"Thank you Venia," Cinna muttered gratefully as he stepped inside. He was exhausted, and it hurt him to see that Katniss was still weak and injured despite his attempts to help her. He turned around to see Venia looking at him calculatingly.

"So, why haven't you told Katniss about you yet?" she asked, "It's obvious that you're worrying about her, but you haven't even been near her since she woke up in hospital? What's going on?"

"I spoke to the President a few days ago," he said, sidestepping the question, "And I'm so sorry about what she did to you. I wouldn't have asked you to go with Katniss if I'd have thought that you were going to be treated like that."

"Apology accepted Cinna, but you already know that."

"Let me finish. She said that Katniss was determined to kill President Snow. I don't want to distract her from that. She deserves retribution for all that he's put her and Peeta through. I'm planning to help District 13 fight, and I don't want her to be worrying about me all the time."

Venia was quiet.

I think that you're logic doesn't make any sense, but I trust you. Just think about it."

I start training today, and I want to not just do well, but to excel. I have to be the best possible so that President Coin won't have any reservations about sending me to the Capitol. Today, all I have to do is prove that I'm one of their most valuable assets.

I start to assemble my gun, Johanna by my side. Luckily, it is something I can do, and I finish before her.

I look up at the rest of the group, who are running around the field, and I see brown hair, and a flash of green eyes. I look down at my gun again and ignore it.


	3. Chapter 3

Title : Hallucinations

Author : Nemainofthewater

Disclaimer : I don't own anything you recognise. It all belongs to Suzanne Collins.

**Chapter 3**

Wherever I go, whether it is on the training fields, in the mess hall or just in one of the corridors, I think I see him, only to look up and see nothing, as if he's vanished into thin air. I try to ignore it, but every time it happens, I can't help looking up, against the part of my mind that whispers at me to give it up, that he's dead, that I should concentrate on Snow.

I lie on my bed, but my thoughts are in turmoil and I can't get to sleep. Finally, I switch the light back on and take out the book of designs that was Cinna's last gift to me. As I flip through it, his presence is so strong that I almost cry. I take out a pen and write:

_Dear Cinna… _

Levels down from where Katniss was writing Cinna was also having a restless night. He lay in bed, listening to Venia's snores. Over the last few days, it had become harder and harder to avoid Katniss, whether it was at training which he shared with her, or at the dining hall, where he ate at the same time as her (he was really to feel that some higher Power, or possibly Haymitch, was trying to tell him something).

He turned over and buried his head in his pillow, uncomfortable by Capitol standards, but better than what he had had for months.

Johanna and I walk down to the Block, a replica of a Capitol block that we perform drills and practice attacks in, and I find out that we are passing one by one. In front of us, I see a flash of brown hair as the next soldier steps into it. I ignore it and turn to talk to Johanna.

Just before Cinna was about to walk into the Block, he saw the face that he had been trying to avoid for the past few weeks. Katniss looked at him, and he hurriedly turned his face away, and strode into the Block.

Once in he tried to turn his mind away from Katniss and concentrate on his test. He needed to pass this to be able to take part in the capture of the Capitol. He ducked as a spray of bullets flew over his head, and then rolled to the side to avoid the bomb that he had nearly hit.

Focus. He had to focus.

Cinna followed the directions from the earpiece, carefully avoiding bombs and traps, and watching out for snipers, and found himself in a square. The commander instructed him to get to the center of the square. It seemed a little too easy; Cinna had been told that he would be tested with his greatest weakness in the Block.

He moved cautiously forwards, wary of any traps that might appear. He kept his gun ready, and so when they jumped out he reacted instinctively and shot one of them before he realized it.

"Cinna! What are you doing?"

The woman next opposite him ran to the dead man that he now recognized as one of his fellow stylists who had taken District 11. The women, his partner, looked up at him with accusing eyes.

"We thought you were dead, that the rebels had killed you," she whispered to him. "What are you doing here? Why are you helping them? You should be here, at home with us Cinna, but instead I find you with them, the rebels that are ruining the peace, and killing everyone."

"Kill her." The voice in his ear whispered, "Finish the mission soldier."

Cinna knelt down next to the woman, and leant over towards her. She looked up at him, tears still in her eyes, and he shot her. Feeling numb, he walked over to the centre of the square and sat down, uncaring that there might be a bomb there.


	4. Chapter 4

Title : Hallucinations

Author : Nemainofthewater

Disclaimer : I don't own anything you recognise. It all belongs to Suzanne Collins.

**Chapter 4**

The silence is all-consuming, and it stifles the air, and makes any words that they want to say dry in their throats so not to break it.

"I can't believe that you shot me." Said Portia, finally, shattering the spell that compelled them to keep silent.

"I can't believe that you're alive." said Cinna. "What happened? Why are you here? I thought that you were dead. It was the first thing that I asked! How long have you been here? Why didn't you tell…"

He was cut off by Portia's finger on his lips.

"I know you have a lot of questions," she breathed, "But considering that you're trying to avoid Katniss, I don't think that we should have this conversation here when she has her test today."

"Come with me."

The two stylists crossed the Block, and went out through the back, but they didn't stop, merely continued onwards until they reached the apartment that Cinna was sharing with Venia, deep underground.

The door closed besides them, and Cinna led Portia to his bed, and they both sat down.

"Listen to me. No, I'm not dead. I'm here because I was imprisoned in the Capitol to blackmail Peeta into cooperating. When District 13 raided the city, they found and freed me. I didn't tell you that I was here because I didn't know that you weren't dead. "

"What do you mean that you didn't know that I wasn't dead?" asked Cinna quietly.

"You weren't with us in the cells. I didn't know where you were, and eventually Snow told us that you were dead."

"Snow told you that I was… Hold on. What do you mean_ us_ Portia?"

"Some of the other stylists. They supported you Cinna. You were their idol, and they were all taken when you disappeared."

Cinna flinched slightly, and he turned away. He didn't want people sacrificing themselves for him. He didn't want people getting pulled off the streets of the Capitol for him, and he definitely didn't like what he suspected what Portia had gone through because of him. Because they were friends and she was his fellow stylist for District 12.

"Don't do that," said Portia softly. "Don't tell yourself that it's your fault, as if we couldn't make up our minds about anything. It isn't because of you. I fully support the destruction of the Capitol, and I have since before we met."

Cinna looked back at her, green eyes weary, and he clearly wanted to contest what she had said, but he kept quiet.

"Why haven't you been to see Peeta?" he finally asks, then immediately knows that it was the wrong thing to say as Portia's face tightened.

"I can't."

"Why not? I'm sure that knowing that you're fine and here with him will help."

"But it won't. He hates me."

Cinna sat by her for a moment.

"Snow brainwashed him. He hates you because Snow brainwashed him."

"He thinks that all I wanted to do was make an impression as a stylist. That I hated having District 12 and that I was conspiring with Katniss against him."

Cinna didn't say anything, but started to rub her back softly and she leaned into him and closed her eyes.

"I could go and talk to him,' he offers, "Snow mightn't have thought to edit his memories of me."

"Thank you," she whispers back.

He knows that it's right when she buries her head in his shoulder, and they just hold each other for hours.


End file.
